The Harvard Crimson reports that noted Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree will be disciplined for plagiarizing the work of Yale law professor Jack Balkin in a recent book. (Hat tip: How Appealing) Professor Ogletree claims the plagiarism was inadvertent, and there is no reason to suspect otherwise. The Crimson story nonetheless suggests that Professor Ogletree did plan to publish the work of others — in this case, his student research assistants — under his own name:
“I made a serious mistake during the editorial process of completing this book, and delegated too much responsibility to others during the final editing process,” he said. “I was negligent in not overseeing more carefully the final product that carries my name.” . . .
Ogletree told The Crimson that he had not read the passage of Balkin’s book that appears in his own work. An assistant inserted the material into a manuscript and intended for another assistant to summarize the passage, according to Ogletree’s statement. The first assistant inadvertently dropped the end quote, and the second assistant accidentally deleted the attribution to Balkin before sending a draft to the publisher.
When the draft returned, Ogletree did not realize that it was not his material, he said in the statement.
Prof Ogletree “did not realize it was not his material”? Does this mean he did not realize the words were not his own — in which case his research assistants were taking liberties with his manuscript — or did he simply not realize it was the work of someone other than his research assistants. If the latter, which I believe is the more likely reading of the above, then Ogletree did plan to publish the words of others under his own name.
Of course it is common for prominent figures to use ghostwriters in preparing manuscripts, and many authors include material prepared by — and perhaps even drafted by — research assistants and others. In this Professor Ogletree would hardly be alone. But is this the appropriate standard of scholarship for a tenured law professor? At Harvard? Perhaps I have an old fashioned perspective on these sorts of things, but I am disturbed by the idea of tenured professors at prestigious institutions using research assistants to draft portions of their scholarly work. It this a reasonable view? Or do I have an outmoted view of legal scholarship? After all, attorneys regularly sign documents draftd by others, so why shouldn’t law professors do the same?
The Weekly Standard‘s Joseph Bottum is also troubled by the standard of scholarship suggested by this case. He also notes that the Harvard Law School explicitly warns its students that inadvertence and the press of time are not acceptable excuses for plagiarism.
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